Speaking Freely

Don't believe what all the scientists are saying nowadays. This world of ours was hotter in the 1980's. Especially that one time, when I was nine, and had to stand in line all day at Six Flags over Texas.

But misery is not what sears one summertime amusement park line into my memory, like the hot asphalt scorching my little purple flip flops. Everything else about that white hot day, though viewed through the squint of my mind's eye, was completely ordinary to me as an Okie, temporarily living in Texas. To roast in one ride line or another was a rite of passage for modern western prairie youth: a price willingly paid for the wind-whipped centrifugal, animatronic, splash-landing reprieve to come.

No, it was the sound of Spanish, being spoken nearby, that made that line, that day, stay. I could hear the two women in front of me, unassumingly, flipping sounds around like they were supposed to sound like that. A conversation, likely about mundane family gossip, hypnotized me. Probably plans for where to eat between leaving the park and heading to the hotel, danced in my ears. Impossible music. It made no sense to me, but I could tell it made sense to someone. I longed to understand them. They were enchantresses, putting me under a spell with their casual incantations.

Surprise surprise: I was a precocious and talkative kid. Sometimes, after dropping some lengthy, bookworm-fueled chatter on a glazey-eyed grown-up, they'd smile at me stiffly and ask if I had an "OFF" button.

It was a question which elicited about as much comprehension as I enjoyed that day, listening to eleventy million hours of a Spanish at Six Flags. So many words.Those were words, right? All of them? Hearing another language sounded liberating.  Like the freedom to leap out of my small world of conversations with well-known adults and their weary attention spans. Speaking outside of the comprehension of some, yet still within the understanding others. But who? Who else talked this way? Who else understood? Could I understand it too, someday?

Can I tell you another story? Just kidding, it's my blog. No "OFF" button here, just "PUBLISH."

Ahem, Once Upon a Time, two days later, back home in Big Spring, Texas, language left me out again. Some kids from my church and I were bumping along a country road in a van, on our way to another vernal tradition of my youth: VBS. (Vacation Bible School. One week of memorizing verses, gluing popsicle sticks, drinking apple juice, and singing about that "Arky Arky." Y'all know. Don't front.)

Our church offered rides to and from VBS, in the form of a van that came to each kid's house, picking us up every morning and dropping us off in the afternoons. That day, that van ride, like the Six Flags line, was no novelty.

Had it not been for my first encounter with " the N-word," my only memory from the whole week would most likely have been the devastating victory I delivered in a contest to look up Bible verses faster than everyone else. To be fair, none of those other kids stood a chance. They could all best me at any physical game, but, like I said before, words were my domain. I was merciless, destroying kids as old as twelve who didn't even seem to know which testament they were in. An inspirational poster, mounted on a large piece of cardboard and shrink-wrapped in cellophane, was my trophy. I was certain it meant great things for my future.

Such a glorious defeat of mine enemies could have outshone the week if it weren't for a freckle-faced boy, on the ride to VBS, introducing me to the language of his people.

It began, as I imagine it often must, with the exchange of jokes. Just kids, young enough to actually heartily laugh at knock-knock jokes, but old enough to want to sound like the adults we have heard nearby. A boisterous lad with a wavy reddish shag asked everyone what he was certain would be a humorous question. His blue eyes flashed as he cheekily made an analogy between the night sky and the color of ....what? What was that word? Everyone in the van laughed. I looked around, confused. Left out. Next, another camper had a similar joke to tell. And another one. Their meanings were all alike, and elusive, though the new vocabulary differed. What were they all laughing about? Of course a better question would have been, "Who were they all laughing about?"

Their sounds made sense to someone, but who? Could I understand it? I came home, attempting to replicate the words I had just heard, hoping my parents could translate them. This was my language. I should understand it. It made everyone laugh. Ever the talkative word nerd, it unsettled me to lose out on the meaning of something. As soon as my parents heard me approximating a word salad of racial slurs, they stopped me, horrified, saying those were ugly and terrible things to say. I was never to repeat them because they disrespected people of other races.

The end, right? Except that was only the beginning.

Because this is America. 

Each pair, or van-ful, of us might only understand each other, but an individual can feel more connected to a "foreign" language than her own, here. It is the strength of a pluralistic society: one where there's no official anything: language, religion, ethnicity. It means our kids grow up with a wide array of meaning with which to communicate, seek understanding, and shape new meaning.

For all its frustrating complications, this country holds, sometimes hostage, the potential for just about anything.